Blood and Salt (12 page)

Yarema Mykytiuk got to his feet. “We need to work together, or we’ll always have Radoski on our backs.” When he said the
pahn’s
name, it sounded like spitting.

A murmur ran through the room. They liked what Yarema was saying, but wondered, How do you get from here to there – to that better time when the
pahn
isn’t on your back? How do you keep yourself and your family from getting hurt?

A very old man in rough, worn clothes, Ostap Vovchuk, stood to speak. His eyes were milky blue, almost blind, but they seemed to see more clearly than the eyes of many sighted men. His long white hair made a blazing cloud in the lamplight.

“You know I was born a serf. When I was a serf, I couldn’t see a way to be anything different. But somehow I imagined a time when I might be free.”
There was a slight quaver in his voice, but the old fellow had their attention.

“Strange, isn’t it? I didn’t know what being free was.”

“All right,” Lubomyr said, “we’re free now, but it doesn’t always feel that way. Not when you owe money and your debt goes on year after year.”

I began to wonder how late it was getting. I was hoping to see Halya that evening, at a place in the forest where we’d met before. I’d asked Larysa to speak to her at the village well that morning, and I was sure she’d come – if she could get away.

The meeting broke down into talk about freedom and debt and whether a war was coming. My father saw he wasn’t going to get anywhere with a flour mill that night.

“Why do we have to give our sons to the emperor?” a middle-aged man called Zoran asked. “Does he ask us when to start a war?”

“No one asks us anything,” Lubomyr said.

“He’s kept us out of wars for a long time,” said Hryhory, another old
dido.
“To be fair.”

“Tak,
and to be fair, it could all come to an end any time, whether we like it or not,” Lubomyr said. He seemed suddenly to see his life in a new way. To see how sick he was of the village.

“I suppose we could always leave,” Zoran said. “But how do we know it would be any better someplace else? We don’t.”

“Maybe not,” Pavlo Heshka broke in, “but Viktor Dubrovsky’s going to Kanady.”

Everybody looked amazed, except for the other men who’d been in the tavern the night Viktor drank with Kondarenko.

I felt it like a blow to the gut.

I saw a bitter look cross Yarema’s pleasant face. Kondarenko was going to buy Viktor’s land. Land Yarema himself would have liked to buy.

Lubomyr pulled the immigration poster out of his vest. Smoothed it and held it up for everyone to see. “Look. A man can get one hundred and sixty acres of land. For almost nothing. Why don’t we all just sell up and go?”

“That’s right,” Pavlo said. “Why should Viktor have all the luck?” He tried to laugh it off, but it was obvious he hadn’t heard that his brother was thinking about going anywhere. Of course, maybe it was the first time Lubo had thought about it.

“Have you ever got anything for nothing?” Mykola asked.

“Not in this life,” Yarema said. “I think we can make things better here.”

“Maybe,” Lubomyr said, “but rich
pahns
don’t sit back and let you take things from them.”

“No,” said Hryhory, who’d had to live on the uncertain charity of the village since he fell from a hay wagon and broke his leg, “they don’t give up what they have.”

“Listen to me,” Ostap Vovchuk said. “Taras Shevchenko was born a serf. But he became free. He told us always to remember who we are.”
The old man pulled a book from his vest. It fell open in his hands, so worn it was a wonder it hadn’t fallen apart. He held it as if it were a holy icon, and began to read.

Examine everything you see.

Then ask yourselves: Now who are we?

Whose children? Of what fathers born?

By whom enslaved in utter scorn?

The door of the reading hall opened as Ostap was reading the poet’s words, and my friend Ruslan came quietly into the room and sat down near his father. Nobody said a word.

Teofan looked shocked, and afraid. There was no way Ruslan should be in this room. He must have left the garrison without permission. My dearest friend, always so neat and reliable, who never made trouble with anyone, had run away from the army. His face was covered in sweat, and he looked desperate.

He and his father whispered together. I heard Larysa’s name. I heard him say he had to get married.

We all became aware of a commotion outside, something rhythmic, coming nearer every second. Ostap, who hadn’t moved since Ruslan came in, began to read again.

Examine everything you see.

Then ask yourselves: Now who are we?

The door was thrown open. Six or seven soldiers burst in, led by a sergeant I’d seen around the garrison, Werner Schratt, a man nobody seemed to like. The army must have found him useful, though,
because Ruslan said he always had charge of the new recruits.

Ostap went right on as though the soldiers weren’t there.

Whose children? Of what fathers born?

By whom enslaved in utter scorn?

Schratt grabbed my father’s newspaper from a table. “Socialist garbage!” he said. He tore it in half and threw it on the floor. It made me angry, but I kept still.

He was coming closer to us. Ruslan’s hands shook, but he held his back straight.

Schratt picked up the immigration poster. “Lies! All lies. You leave here, you lose everything.” He crumpled the poster and threw it down too. Ostap began again.

Examine everything you see.

The sergeant grabbed the book and tossed it to the floor. I could see hatred rise from the village men like steam, and Ostap continued from memory.

Then ask yourselves: Now who are we?

Teofan, who is Ostap’s son, stepped forward and recited with him.

Whose children? Of what fathers born?

By whom enslaved in utter scorn?

The sergeant tried to sneer, but the old man’s dignity sobered him. “Nothing doing here, men,” he said and headed for the door. “Just a bunch of peasants who think they’re poets.” The soldiers didn’t think that was funny, since most of them were peasants.

Ruslan brushed off his
dido’s
book and handed it back. Ostap held it to his heart.

The sergeant paused by the door and pointed at Ruslan. “Oh, and bring that one with you.” The soldiers grabbed my friend. Ruslan struggled to free his arms.

“Let my grandson go!” Ostap shouted.

Ruslan continued to struggle, but the soldiers dragged him out the door. “Please,” he begged. “I can’t go yet! I’m getting married.”

Everyone in the room, except Teofan, looked surprised.

“He
was
getting married!”
The sergeant slapped his thigh at his own wit and they marched Ruslan away, Schratt’s laughter echoing in the lane.

This was the thing with the Austrians. People said they weren’t so bad, certainly better than the Poles. And probably that was so. But they had power over your life. I knew I’d never see them in the same way again.

Soon I’d be in the army, and Halya would be far away. What was I going to do?

“A beautiful old man,
that Ostap.” Ihor says. “I wish I could have known him.”

“What happened to Ruslan?” Yuriy asks.

“Nothing good,” Tymko says. “You can bet on that.”

“Did you get to see Halya that night?
”
Yuriy doesn’t give up easily.

“All that is coming,” Taras says. “But the story goes its own way.” He hopes he’ll find the right words to tell it.

“That’s fair,” Ihor says. “Everything will happen in its time.”

“So. In a few minutes I came to a grassy clearing in the centre of tall beeches and Halya ran to me like a silver shadow in the moonlight. Her hair smelled like the forest.”
Taras hears somebody sigh. “We kissed so long we finally had to pull apart to get a breath.”

“Dobre,”
Yuriy says. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Halya pulled an egg
from her pocket. In the pale light I could barely make out the curving lines that spiralled around it. It was the one she’d meant to give me on Drenched Monday.

“Thank you,” I said.
“Tse chudoviy.”
Beautiful.

“This kind of egg comes from long ago,” Halya told me. “Baba showed me how to make it.” We were still a bit short of breath and I wanted to kiss her some more, but I knew we had to talk.

“I made something for you, too,” I said. I gave her a brass pendant shaped like the sun with slender rays flowing outward.

This is too much
for the other men. “Where would you get something like that?” Yuriy says.

“They have jewellers in Chernowitz, you know,
”
Tymko tells him.

“I didn’t get it in Chernowitz. I made it.”

“Made
it?” Tymko says. “How?”

“I got the metal from broken harness brass, and I worked on it in the evenings. The sun part hangs from a brass wire that fastens with a loop at the back. It took me a long time to learn to draw out the wire without breaking it.”

“I wish I could have seen that,”
Yuriy says.

“Well then, you can have your wish.” Taras reaches under his shirt and pulls out a pendant just like the one he described. “I made one for each of us. Hers is just the same.”

“Halya was right,” Myro says.
“Tse chudoviy.”

“Thank you. Maybe I could go on now?”

“Please, do go on,” Tymko says. “And I’ll try to keep these ruffians from interrupting you again.”

Halya fastened
the pendant around her neck under her blouse.
“Dyakuyiu
, my love.”

I showed her my own pendant. We kissed again and held each other close, but in a moment Halya pulled away.

“I don’t want them to take you for the army!”

“I know. But Halychka, there’s something else. Your father’s going to Kanady.” She looked at me as if I was crazy. “I found out at the meeting in the reading hall.”

I told her what I’d heard, and at first she thought the men who were at the meeting were crazy too. But when I talked about Viktor and Kondarenko in the tavern, she stopped shaking her head. Like everyone else, she knew her father didn’t go there, and he certainly didn’t buy other men drinks. And the more she thought about it, the more she realized that Viktor had been more secretive than usual lately. Just as if he were up to something.

What on earth could they do?

And then I told her about Ruslan.

We agreed that she’d come to the smithy in the morning. After I watched her into her house, I went back to the unlocked reading room and picked up the creased poster.

“Sounds bad,”
Yuriy says. “What are they going to do?

“Taras will have to join the army, and Halya will have to go to Canada,” Ihor says.

“Yet he stands before us,” Tymko says. “Well, he sits. How can that be?”

“Maybe they traded places,” Myro said. “Halya joined the army and Taras came to Canada.”

“I hope we’ll know some day,” Ihor says.

“I hope we’ll know a bit sooner than that.” Tymko winks.

“I could tell you what happens next, but you’d say I wasn’t there.”

“No,” Myro says. “I don’t think you have to worry about that. Just tell it.” So he does.

Halya crept
into the silent house and heard Natalka snoring in her bed over the
peech.
A rough hand grasped her shoulder and flung her into the room as if she were a stuffed doll.

“You’ve been sleeping with Kuzyk’s son!”
Viktor snarled.

Natalka woke with a shriek and almost jumped down from her bed over the
peech.

“I have not!”

Viktor slapped her face. “Don’t talk back to your father!” He got ready to hit her again, but Natalka moved in front of him.

“My daughter’s dead,” she said fiercely. “I must speak for her child.”

“Her child is a shameless slut!” Viktor said, but he looked a little ashamed at the mention of his dead wife. “She makes the whole village laugh at me!”

“No! They laugh because her father’s a fool who can’t forget the past.”

“I warn you –” He stepped toward her, arm raised.

“You’d hit an old woman, would you?” Natalka stood tall. “Coward!”

For a moment Viktor couldn’t believe his ears. He took a step toward her.

“Why shouldn’t she marry Taras?” Natalka asked. “He’s a good young man.”

“His father’s a revolutionary!”

“Pah! Kuzyk’s no radical. Anyway, it’s not the father she wants to marry!”

“Shut your mouth!”
Viktor slapped Natalka across the face and she cried out.